La Sortie

The initial images of the Lumière brother‘s La sortie des ouvrier de l‘usine are transformed into almost black and white surfaces, harnessed, Sisyphus-like, to a lunatic dance of repetition. Fruhauf increases the acceleration of the striding workers in descrete steps until they are tearing along - the capacity of the film tested to its outer limits - until it can‘t take any more. Maximum acceleration leads to stasis - after the acceleration throughout the film comes the logical consequence - the last frame - the freeze frame. Nothing more can happen. The model (literally) of progress collapses. And instead there is paralysis. A dead end. The workers are motionless, and with them the factory. Rien ne va plus. (Peter Tscherkassky)

OK Artist in Residence 2004
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Austria 1998
black & white
6 minutes